Aligning with Grace

Messages come in many ways - if we have the ears to listen, the eyes to see, and the heart to feel... I receive several of them on a walk this week, and it has taken me days to reflect on them and explore their meaning for me... The day is beautiful - cool, crisp, and lit up by a brilliant blue, and cloudless sky. I am anxious to get going and commence my daily litany of prayers, meditations, and dialogue with the Other Side... Almost immediately, I am stopped by a beautiful doe several feet in front of me. I glanced to look at my feet momentarily - and when I looked back up - there she was, seemingly having materialized out of thin air. I look at her - and she peers at me very intently. I begin to speak to her - heart to heart and soul to soul. She listens, and almost seems to nod, and then takes a few steps toward me. I do not move, afraid of scaring her away, so we continue our dance of beholding one another and communicating silently. She moves off to the side, grac...

Sometimes, insights and answers come from unexpected places. They will come to us if we quiet the voices within that often drown out the stillness so that we can truly listen and take heed... Welcome insights and answers can come to us in messages we receive from friends - in an email, or a call, or a Facebook post, or simply through our observation and appreciation of the wild life all around us - or the beauty in flowers and vegetation. For the last several weeks on my walks, I have been invariably visited by exuberant robins manifesting out of heavy canopies of draping branches that then proceed to "walk"  on the path, right in front of me. They gayly hop a few steps forward, then slyly wait for me to catch up to them. I follow at a safe distance, until they decide to start hopping again. Sometimes we play out this little ritual for few minutes. So finally today, I decided to look up the meaning of robins on my favorite animal totem site: "A Robin totem will s...